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Jonathan R. White is professor of honors, emeritus, in the Frederik Meijer Honors College of Grand Valley State University. The founding director of GVSU's School of Criminal Justice, Dr. White was promoted to dean of social sciences and served there until he was summoned to the Bureau of Justice Assistance to direct the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program after the attacks of 9/11. He conducted counterterrorism training for law enforcement and military forces in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and throughout the United States. A recognized expert on religious terrorism, Dr. White taught classes on national security, intelligence analysis and counterterrorism in the Meijer Honors College. Steven Chermak is a professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University and an investigator for the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. His research on terrorism, cyberterrorism, school shootings and mass shootings has led to the development of four databases using open source materials. The Extremist Crime Database, which Dr. Chermak created in collaboration with Professor Joshua Freilich (John Jay College of Criminal Justice), is a first of its kind national database on criminal activities involving U.S. far right, far left and jihadist extremists and includes data on violent and financial crimes, characteristics of violent groups and the nature of foiled plots. The American School Shooting Study database, which Dr. Chermak developed with Dr. Joshua D. Freilich and Nadine Connell, covers all fatal and nonfatal shootings occurring on school grounds since 1990, including characteristics of incidents, perpetrators and schools. The Mass Shooting Database includes all mass shooting events occurring in the United States since 1990. With funding from the NCITE Center and the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Chermak also is in the process of building a database of cyberterrorism incidents. |
